Tunisian protestor and vegetable vendor Mohamed Bouazizi is celebrated each year in the central town of Sidi Bouzid on the anniversary of the start of the revolution, the first of the Arab Spring uprisings, triggered by his suicide

Six years since a young Tunisian stallholder set himself on fire, triggering revolutions across the Arab world, his country's suicide rate is surging over economic and social woes, experts say.

Mohamed Bouazizi, who self-immolated on December 17, 2010 in protest at unemployment and police harassment and died a month later, was among hundreds of Tunisians who have killed themselves in recent years.

The rising suicide rate "had already been noticed... over a decade ago", Fatma Charfi, a child psychiatrist and head of the Committee for the Prevention of Suicide, told AFP.

Last year, authorities recorded 365 suicides in a population of 11 million -- around 3.27 per 100,000 people.

While that rate is low compared to other countries, the data is likely skewed by social and religious taboos, meaning the real figure may be much higher.

The toll is particularly high among the young -- around half the victims were aged between 20 and 39.

Charfi said the continuous rise in recorded suicides was "a very serious matter".

The committee she heads was set up in 2015 in response to warnings from experts that suicides were on the rise.

It has been charged by the health ministry with collecting better data and creating a national strategy to tackle the problem.

Tunisia does not yet have a national suicide register.

Under the regime of former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled in 2011 following mass protests sparked by Bouazizi's suicide, the data was incomplete, experts said.

A Tunisian man prays at the mausoleum of Mohamed Bouazizi, the young fruit and vegetable seller whose self-immolation kicked off the Arab Spring on December 17, 2012, while Tunisian suicides continue to rise

(AFP/File)

Forensic scientist Mehdi Ben Khelil of the Charles-Nicolle Hospital in Tunis is co-author of a study on the revolution's impact on suicide.

He said he found an increase in suicides between 2011 and 2012, then a small reduction before a second peak in 2014.

He linked the second rise to the country's difficult political transition and the impact of the economic crisis on individuals.

"There are more people without jobs (and) with financial problems," he said.

Historically taboo, suicide has received growing coverage in the Tunisian media. But that itself has its dangers, say experts.

"We are talking about suicide in Tunisia but mostly in an inappropriate way," Ourida Boussada, a lecturer at IPSI, the country's oldest journalism school, said at a recent seminar.

Boussada said too much coverage was sensationalist and revealed intimate details about the victim's life.

IPSI is working with the journalists' union and HAICA, the body responsible for broadcasting, to improve reporting on the issue.

"We must tackle suicide... as a public health problem, not isolating it to a single cause," she said, "so that vulnerable people will not be tempted to take the same course of action."